Durian Tree

So here's the story. My family has a durian tree. If you come to my house, you will find it fruiting a lot. The fruits come in big sizes. They’re yellowish, redolent, and yummy!

My durian is special, more than any durian you ever saw, because my durian tree has its own long story J

Twenty years ago, back then in 1994, my dad came home from office carrying a poly bag of durian seedling. He got it from his friend who had nursery business.

The seller said, "The seed is very good! It’s a kind of Durian Petruk."

My dad put the seedling in our little garden. The garden itself is only 30 meters square, not really spacious, but my mom and dad love gardening very much, they planted kinds of tree, vegetable, flowers, fern and shrubs, made it now look more like rain forest than a garden.

However, the durian seedling got its special spot. At the corner of garden it was kept in poly bag for ten years. It grew very slow.

Then my dad decided to pluck the tree out from its poly bag, he changed it into a large drum barrel to make more space for the tree to grow. The tree eventually grew faster, it become thick and tall, but produced zero fruits (sigh).

Then my mom became very anxious about the tree’s fertility, she bought many kinds of fertilizer. The tree was under her attention. It received royal treatment, daily watering and given the best nutrition a tree can get, until our neighbor told my mom to give the tree some cuts, to make the tree fruiting real soon. In no time, my mom came back to the tree with a sharp knife. She cut the trunk several times, left it smeared with resin.

Six years passed by, still no fruits appeared, and the tree seemed like had stopped growing (!)

"Perhaps the root has grown too big for its tiny barrel", said my dad.

Then we decided to move the tree from its drum barrel to the ground. The tree had grown so big and heavy, it took 3 men to relocate it. We moved it to the ground so the root can grow more freely and hopefully will soon bear fruits. The durian tree is now placed next to our mango tree.

Another three years passed by, we thought the tree must be fruiting now. But apparently, the tree became thinner. Its branches had lost more leaves than before.

We had no idea what happened at that time. Perhaps the tree didn't like its new place.

One night, there was heavy storm in Bogor, ravaging our garden. The next morning, we found our poor durian tree was hit by the mango tree. It seemed like the storm broke some of mango tree branches, it fell upon the durian tree.

The durian tree was severely injured because of the storm. We tried to fix it but it didn't work, the three became thinner and scrawny.

My dad said, "Well, it’s only a matter time. Our poor durian tree might not survive."

My dream to enjoy delicious durian flesh was over.

But after a year, surprisingly, our durian tree survived! It recovered itself and started to grow flowers! When durian season comes, the tree showed its fertility. Baby durians came out from its branches, so many of them, around 6-7 durians. They were coming out like 'plup-plup-plup' everywhere!

Soon after, durians became trending topic in our neighborhood. Neighbors began to talk about our durian. Every time they walked pass by our house, they would stopped for a while, looking up, observing our durian tree, guessing which one of the fruits that would ripe perfectly.

The first ripe durian was successfully landed on our garden. My mom cooked sticky rice, served with durian sauce and we shared it with our neighbors.

Lessons learned I got from the durian tree is that we cannot stay forever in comfort zone. The tree has experienced relocation twice, from poly bag to the drum barrel and to the ground. It has to compete with other plants to get enough sunshine, soil, and water. It had gone through dry and rainy seasons, wind and storms. It took 20 years to finally produce fruits.

I think it's similar to human being, we cannot stay in comfort zone forever. We had to compete to survive. We had experienced series of bad situation that actually helping us to grow. We have potentials that perhaps we haven’t figured it out yet. But if we keep learning, patiently and persistently (like the durian tree), we will sow our hard work in the future.

Our first ever prime durian was perfectly ripped off right after it's fallen from the tree J